Giles Jerome, disillusioned and at odds with the modern world, has abandoned a respectable career in the City of London in favour of the vagabond life of the open road. On a certain Midsummer's Eve of full moon his steps lead him to a country inn where Morris Men are dancing. Among them he meets an old friend and makes a new one, and also enjoys an agreeable encounter with a pretty girl, but is less taken with her cross-grained male companion. Later in the evening this assorted group of young people, unexpectedly thrown together, discover an anachronistically dressed man asleep in a moonlit meadow. He invites them to accompany him to his home, and they find themselves translated into a bewildering land of legends and nursery tales. This land is one of colour, pageantry and great beauty. But it proves also to be one of great perils. Giles and his friends find themselves committed to a fantastic quest, but first they must learn, the hard way, the accomplishments required of knights-errant. Giles' idiosyncratic and rather old-fashioned narrative describes the course of his personal transformation from carefree vagabond to dedicated knight, and also confides to the reader his hopeless love for an enigmatic lady of high degree and surpassing beauty. The tale is completed in Book 2: "The Quest of the Sleeping Princess".